Reducing unintended fertility will have little impact on emissions

Few would disagree that helping women and men who want to avoid or delay pregnancy is a laudable goal that contributes to the well-being of individuals, families, communities, and nations. The international community acknowledged this as a fundamental principle of population policy in theReport of the International Conference on Population and Development (PDF) (also known as “The Cairo Consensus”) which states, “All couples and individuals have the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children, and to have the information, education, and means to do so.” However, fulfilling this ideal is unlikely to significantly impact overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Fred Meyerson uses the cautious term “unintended fertility” to reference the unintended half of all U.S. pregnancies and the 200 million women in developing countries who would like to avoid ordelay pregnancy. But he erroneously conflates the idea of contraception, which is largely a matter of timing, with the issue of greenhouse gas emissions, which is a function of absolute human numbers–and the distribution of those numbers among more- and less-developed nations.

Fertility surveyshave found that most couples worldwide want at least two children. In many less-developed countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, people tend to want at leastthree children (often with a preference for sons). This is to say that even with family planning resources in place, reducing “unintended fertility”–i.e.unplanned pregnancies–will not necessarily lead to replacement level fertility in less-developed regions, nor reduce average family size in more developed regions.

The average global birthrate is 2.6 children per woman, equaling approximately 136 million births per year. Minus annual deaths, that’s a net growth of about 78 million people per year. If all nations instantly reached replacement-level fertility, thereby eventually stabilizing the population as Fred and others advocate, the total global number of births would fall to about 120 million annually, about a 12-percent reduction.

But the Devil is in the details: The net reduction in births matters less than the distribution of regional demographic shifts. Nearly all of the more-developed nations havebelow replacement fertility levels. Many of these countries, such as Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia, are actively seeking toraise fertility levels for reasons of economics and social welfare. In fact, if all more-developed, industrialized countries reach replacement-level fertility, their total number of annual births wouldincrease by 30 percent, or about 4 million births.

Other dynamics are at work, as well. In the United States, where fertility is already at the replacement level, and in Europe, where fertility is well below replacement, immigration is the primary driving force behind most of the projected population growth. While immigration does not contribute to an increase in the absolute number of humans on Earth, it does shift people into relatively higher consumption brackets. In the unlikely event that immigration were to cease, U.S. population by mid-century would be80 percent smaller than projected, a much greater demographic impact than reducing unintended fertility.

The vast majority of the 200 million women Fred cites are in Africa and Asia. The greatest demand for reducing unintended fertility is in Africa, where per-capita emissions are already so low that lower birth rates would not make a noticeable dent in total global emissions. This tactic could work better in China and India. China, the largest country in the world, is expected to soon overtake the United States as the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gasses–if it hasn’t already. If current trends continue, some experts believe that China’s greenhouse gas emissionswill likely exceed that of all industrialized countries combined during the next 25 years. This is due to both increasing local consumption and massive exports of commodities like steel and concrete.

But again, the fertility level in China is already 1.7. Reducing unintended fertility in China would have little effect on the country’s production of greenhouse gasses. Moreover, if China were to relax its one-child policy and fertility increased to replacement level, the country’s annual number of births would increase by nearly 30 percent, or approximately 5 million additional births.

To be fair, annual births in India would drop by about 4 million if it were to reach replacement-level fertility, and the birth rates in the populous nations of Brazil and Indonesia would also drop by 5 and 2 percent, respectively, as their fertility levels are already near replacement level. But as is widely acknowledged, these and the other less-developed countries are only responsible for one-fifth of the global carbon dioxide buildup that has accumulated in the atmosphere during the last century.

Given these circumstances, focusing on reducing unintended fertility to address climate change–in particular to decrease global greenhouse gas emissions– strikes me as a delay tactic. Instead, the focus should be on significantly and immediately reducing damaging patterns of production and consumption. That’s where we can make the real difference.